LilyPond came about when two musicians wanted to go beyond the soulless look of computer-printed sheet music. Musicians prefer reading beautiful music, so why couldn’t programmers write software to produce elegant printed parts?

The result is a system which frees musicians from the details of layout, allowing them to focus on making music. LilyPond works with them to create publication-quality parts, crafted in the best traditions of classical music engraving.

LilyPond is written and maintained by a community of enthusiasts. It is published under the GNU General Public License and the GNU Free Documentation License, giving everybody the freedom to fix, modify, and extend the program. Creating beautiful music should not require hundreds of dollars of software!